Our Caravan to
Vettes On The Rockies (VOTR) 2006
Day 7: Friday, July 21, 2006
Salina, Kansas
This morning began inauspiciously (is that a word?) Translation: not well.
Ron arose early to go gas up (forgot to do so last night) and, sadly, a white steel post at the Shell station reached out and mashed his left rear quarter panel and rear facia. Take a deep breath before scrolling down to the photo:
We all commiserated and effected what repairs we could:
..and hit the road on our way to Salina, Kansas. C5Registry dude Ray Wright had been corresponding with me and suggested a couple of motels that he felt were "Corvette friendly". I failed to ask him what that meant, exactly, so we chose the Holiday Inn Express.
We made our way north in Missouri to just below Kansas City and crossed over into Kansas. I was expecting Kansas to be flat and uninteresting driving, but we were all pleasantly surprised by how beautiful the drive was. We loved the fact that a cold front (YES!) had gone through yesterday dropping the temps into the mid-to-high 80s.
We saw a sign touting Osceola Cheese and stopped there for a break. Tasty snacks and an unusual photo op:
We stopped later at a McDonald's for quick bite and then, as we were zooming (carefully; we'd heard that KS state troopers were unusually unforgiving of excessive speed) we saw a sign for the "Oz Museum". What the heck. We turned off and drove nine miles into the lovely town of Wamego where, sure enough, they have a museum all about Oz. From L. Frank Baum who wrote the books:
.. to the 1939 Wizard of Oz film and beyond, it was a very entertaining hour or so. There were even life-size exhibits of the Oz characters:
And, the town is charming.
Back into the cars for the final leg into Salina where we arrived about 5pm. The GPS took us right to the Holiday Inn Express -- and there was Ray waiting for us in his very cherry black 98 C5.
We checked into the motel:
.. and noodled with Ray about dinner choices, asking that he and his wife Audrey join us:
We chose Martini's where (at least) one could buy a drink. The average consensus of the meal was a "3" on a scale of 1 to 10. But we did enjoy the wine.
And so to bed..we're off for Colorado at 8am with Ray and Audrey tagging along part-way.